All Work And No Play Makes Laura ...

... a bad blogger.

Sorry for ditching you all for a few days, but I have been working on a paper that I will present on Saturday. It's a paper on blogging, and I will tell you all about it when I come back. The conference will be attended by other scholar/bloggers, some of whom read this blog. So, don't worry, guys. It's almost done. She says with a frozen smile.

The final survey results trickled in a couple of weeks ago, so we're pulling this together very quickly. Not much time to clean the data or revise hypotheses. It's fine. I actually get off on crunch periods. As long as they don't go on for too long.

Crunch periods are made more interesting when you're working at home and not in a hermetically sealed office. At the risk of seeming less than professional to colleagues, let me tell you about my afternoon.

I was able to work for a time in the morning, while the kids were in school. If I skip the shower and leave the dirty dishes, I can get around 2 hours of writing done in the morning. After I picked up Ian from school, my mom took him to Burger King. She had him playing in their indoor playland for two hours, so that I could write in peace. Kiss for the grandma. At 3:00, Ian returned and Jonah got off the school bus shortly after. Then hell broke lose. I bargained with them. If you leave me alone, you can watch a video and play computer games for as long as you like. (Yeah, nice parenting.) I wrote, negotiated changes with the co-author, and settled disputes over video games. At the same time. A copy of the paper was sent to my husband, so he could proof read it on the bus ride home.

At one point, I was on the phone, debugging a video game, sending a file on the other computer, and at that moment I noticed that two neighborhood boys had walked into our garage filled up an entire bin full of our toys and were marching down the street proudly with their booty. HEY! This isn't Toys R Us! Put those toys back right now! I think I hung up on my co-author at that moment. I forgot to eat until after Steve come home.

So, things are a little crazy around here. I'll be back soon. Maybe tomorrow.

Comments

[ianqui]

What happens when the kids do that? Do you tell their parents?

[RCinProv]

Welcome back. I find myself trying to make a word from scholar/bloggers. Schloggers? Bloggars? Anyway, glad you have an actual paper. I look forward to seeing some version. I guess that New Regime ended with this deadline, though, eh? Which is a not a criticsm. There are days I'd love to tell all my students to go Burger King for a while, or play video games.

[Laura]

Ianqui - Nah. I never bother the other parents unless their kids are doing something really stupid. Like jumping on a pile of old boards with rusty nails sticking out. Which has happened.

We live on a dead-end street which is densely populated with little kids. Including a set of twins and a set of quadruplets. It's not unusual for 17 little kids to wandered unsupervised into my backyard where they're doing things like throwing rocks on my roof or climbing the violet trees or dissembling the fence.

RC - Yeah. All new regimes ended yesterday. Including the jogging and nutritious meals regime. Also the 8 hours of sleep regime. All, it will all be done in a few hours.

[Saheli]

Heh, I hope their parents read your blog and duly mortified.